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<p>Mine are juniors too.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl - I thought your kids were seniors. I thought it was strange you were just visiting schools now. Your kids got one more year to kick a*s.</p>
<p>We are thinking about where we want to go visit for spring break and for 4-day weekends throughout the school year. Because we are fortunate enough that financial aid will not be a consideration, I am a fan of strongly considering EA / ED programs, and starting next fall would be way too late, IMO.</p>
<p>I agree, Pizzagirl, but the early visits can sort of backfire too. My son saw Vassar last Feb. and liked it alot. He thought he might apply early, but then I took him to see the more intern focused schools in DC and he wonders if that wouldn’t be a better approach for him. He says he barely remembers Vassar now, so maybe another trip back is in order? Or do we just apply RD everywhere and lose whatever ED edge he might have? (At Vassar as a guy fairly considerable I believe.)</p>
<p>Pizzagirl,</p>
<p>it looks like you and I will be buddies for a while going through this whole journey till 2011 spring together.</p>
<p>S2 wants to shoot for the Army ROTC scholarship, and that’s whole lot more complication. In order to have the best shot at that, he needs to have the scholarship application (which is just like the college application with similar requirements complete with scores, grades and essays) ready during the summer before the senior year, and there he has to list 10 schools he would like the scholarship to apply to. That’s why we need to be on top of things much earlier than the other kids. </p>
<p>there is an added benefit to having a good feel for the kind of schools our kids will be applying to next fall. I have a few schools that may be high runners for him for next year’s application. During this fall and next spring, I will be closely monitoring posts on the forums dedicated to these individual schools. By next fall, I will have vicariously lived through the whole season’s worth of admission cycle. I believe that will give me a whole load of priceless insight. </p>
<p>Let’s try to stay sane with our Juniors! Good luck to all of us.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl & hyeonjlee - This is unfair :mad:. I have to toil through this with real pain and sweat, while you can just “vicariously” experience this! Oh well, I guess this still beats having no one on my side ;).</p>
<p>My daughter fits the topic - National Merit Scholar, 2220 single-seating SAT yet a 3.45 GPA (at an extremely rigorous private school). She is now in college and I would like to offer some thoughts on the subject. I am not trying to be discouraging, but want to offer our first-hand experince to the discussion.</p>
<p>She was rejected at all 3 of her reach (lower top 20) schools. She was even rejected at 2 and waitlisted at 3 of her fit schools. This was a well thought out application list and she aimed slightly lower than her GC recommended. Her results surprised her GC, but she was told that other students results were similar.</p>
<p>This leads me to believe that, in the context of a top 20 school, it is almost impossible to overcome an average GPA with high test scores without some GREAT hook. I recommend you try to ignore the “prestige” factor and look for schools that seem like safeties, but match your child (think Colleges that Change Lives). There are scores of great institutions that don’t have the name recognition to crack the USNWR top 20. Much success in college is about attitude - being a bigger fish in a smaller pond will make your child feel special at a time in their life when self confidence pays huge dividends.</p>
<p>My daughter is now very happy at one of her “statistical” safeties. This is a school that WANTED HER and demonstrated that with one of their top named merit scholarships. Here my D will (hopefully) thrive, have high academic performance, graduate near the top of her class, achive leadership and gain self-confidence. All of these things would have likely been out of her reach at a top 20 school.</p>
<p>sclark14 - Thanks for sharing!</p>
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<p>Couldn’t agree with you more.</p>
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<p>Words of wisdom. Thanks for the advice!</p>
<p>I’m glad you D found her school and that you are happy with it. I’m curious - what kind of EC did she have in HS? Why do you think her GC is off the mark?</p>
<p>sclark14, thank you very much for sharing. I firmly believe it is up to the student to make the best for him/herself. </p>
<p>There are parents who use nothing but the USnews ranking as the sole guide to push their kids. I surely hope their kids get in one of them. Just could not imagine the pressure of one rejection after another for no reason at all. </p>
<p>Another mistake many first time parents made is to underestimate their EFC and over estimate their chance of getting merit $$. Other than the very top schools, most of T20 are still very expensive and many use extensive loans as part of their aid package. </p>
<p>Situations like your D is very desireable - low cost, high GPA, big fish in small pond. Sound like a winner to me.</p>
<p>PCP- but I have 2 at once, and they are very different in terms of likes, interest areas and approaches! D has her study schedule for ACTs mapped out months in advance; S is of the Alfred E Neumann “what me worry” persuasion!</p>
<p>PG, my realtor has a set of twin with very different results. The sister is at Yale and the brother is at the State flagship U. Each kid is different.</p>
<p>Yes, I know. It’s not a competition.</p>
<p>PaperChaserPop, My D had good ECs but not great. Varsity athlete, student leader in tutoring program for underprivileged kids, leadership position at church.</p>
<p>The GC issue is an odd one. Her GC is very savvy and experienced. Her explanation was “this was a bad year to be a smart girl”. Apparently, most the top top girls from her school had similar experiences at their reaches. </p>
<p>My frustration at the process focused upon what I perceived as a lack of appreciation of the difficulty of her high school by admissions staff. This year they sent 6 students out of 95 to HYPS - a consistent pattern. I have seen some scattergrams from other schools where the relationship between GPA and SAT is nearly horizontal. Meaning nearly everyone has a GPA between 3.5 and 4.2, despite their test scores. At my Ds school the plot is sloped, the better GPAs get higher test scores and vice-versa. Admittedly, my daughter is somewhat of an outlier, but not ridiculously so. For my son I will be sure that he tries to emphasize the school’s strength and position on grade inflation in his application somehow.</p>
<p>From what I have seen, girls do worse than boys with similar GPA. I think in general girls are more organized and are able to get better grades than boys in high school. To keep the 50-50 split, girls need to have higher stats. All my daughter’s girlfriends with stats for HYPS ended up at Haverford, Georgetown, NU and Cornell. Whereas most of her guy friends got into their first choices.</p>
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<p>sclark14 - This is very strange indeed. I’m not surprised that she was turned down by the 3 T20’s. They have turned down many many kids with higher GPA’s and higher test scores. But, I am puzzled by her rejections and waitlist status from her “fit” schools which she selected with a lower aim than what her GC recommended. Do you mind sharing the names of some of these fit schools? What was her major?</p>
<p>I’d recommend you dig deeper than her GC’s “this was a bad year to be a smart girl”, especially if this also happened to the “top top girls from her school”. The exercise may help you better prepare and position your son.</p>
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<p>My 1950/3.6 son isn’t reaching for the T20. His highest ranked schools are WFU (28) and Richmond (LAC 35). But, if he wanted to apply to a T20 we’d support him and help him as much as possible…as long as there was a balance of realistic schools on his list as well. </p>
<p>Last year I started a thread asking “What’s it like for your kid to attend his reach school?” I searched but couldn’t find it when this thread opened. It turned out to be a great thread (got “feature” status, even). 
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<p>The key messages that came through in that thread were that most of the kids at reach schools were thriving. Some exceptions, of course, but basically they do fine. The bottom line seemed to be “the hardest thing about the Ivies (etc) is getting in.”</p>
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<p>I’ve wondered about this, but in the opposite direction for the tippy top schools, especially at engineering powerhouses – MIT & CalTech. Does anyone have data on this? This could be an exciting topic to discuss.</p>
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<p>DougBetsy - Thanks for joining and sharing your experience. What you said confirmed my thoughts on this.</p>
<p>I can only speak for Cornell engineering, no concrete data, but of what my daughter has told me. It is opposite for engineering at her school. Girls she knows in engineering have lower stats than she does in math/science tests, and she is in A&S. They are struggling with their engineering courses. Whereas there are some incredibly smart boys. She has encourntered them in her math classes. This is all a big brush stroke and there are always exceptions.</p>
<p>PaperChaserPop, she listed a BioChem major on some applications, undecided on others. </p>
<p>Her fit list was as follows:
Rejected - Boston College, William & Mary
Waitlist - Wake Forest, Villanova, Richmond</p>
<p>The GC “fit” list: Northwestern, Middlebury, Tufts, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Washington & Lee, Emory, Davidson, Boston College, Bucknell, Wake Forest, George Washington</p>
<p>Just got some data for Cornell Engineering 2009 admission:</p>
<p>5790 men applied and 1031 accepted, 17.8%, yield of 45%
1920 women applied and 699 accepted, 36.4%, yield of 39%</p>
<p>This does not indicate whether women’s stats are lower than men’s. But I think we could conclude women have much better chance of getting into engineering than men.</p>